Exam 22: Mesozoic Earth and Life History

What event was first in the breakup of Pangaea?

The Palisades sill is a Cretaceous age basalt intrusion associated with compressional mountain building.

Describe why there are such massive petroleum deposits in the Persian Gulf region.

Briefly state whether ectotherms or endotherms require more food and why.

The ____________________ were characterized by a thickened dome-shaped skull.

The ____________________ dinosaurs are also known as the bird-hipped dinosaurs.

Of the three major classes of mollusks,gastropods were the only significant group in the Mesozoic oceans.

Scientists know that birds began to evolve prior to the Cretaceous due to the fossil ____________________.

What features do ammonites have that make them excellent guide fossils for the Mesozoic?

Unlike the Paleozoic burrowing animals which were soft-bodied,burrowing animals of the Mesozoic were hard-shelled.

The ancestry of the earliest angiosperm is hard to determine.

The three time periods of the Mesozoic,from oldest to youngest are ____________________,____________________,and ____________________.

Mesozoic age coal deposits in the United States are the primary source of coal in this country.

Cycads evolved during the Triassic.

Major mountain-building episodes during the Jurassic in the Cordilleran region resulted in the formation of the ____________________ and ____________________ Mountains.

What was the effect of the global rise in sea level during the Cretaceous?

In what ways did the breakup of Pangaea affect geologic and biologic events on Earth?

Based on the occurrence of dinosaur fossils in the Morrison Formation,what can you conclude about the depositional environment of the unit?

Ammonites were one of three major groups of Mesozoic marine fauna to go extinct at the end of the Cretaceous.

The Gulf of Mexico began to form in the ____________________ Period.